Performance Issue?

[Not Bman]

I have noticed, at least in Vista when ever I am doing ripping, muxing or burning my system slows down to a halt. I have 4GB of ram but when I am doing those things, I am only using 1.6GB at most and it slows down like I am using 3.9GB.

I was looking at the Task Manager during this, and it says under Physical Memory that I have 2813? Is that correct, does that not mean I have just under 3GB of RAM? Anyone got any ideas to why? For either question..

 

[rotjong]

Is 4 GB showing up under System for the memory?

 

[Not Bman]

Wow that was fast, and yes it is.

 

[rotjong]

Wow that was fast, and yes it is.

I'm assuming you are using Vista 32-bit?

 

[Not Bman]

Sorry yes, Vista 32-bit

System info if needed

780i SLI motherboard
8800GT 512MB
4GB dual channel 1066Mhz ram
1TB (2x500) harddrives
Q6600 at 3.02Ghz

And I know the limitation of 32-bit, but it should be able to use 4Gb now correct?

And that is besides my question, i can multi task games and tons of programs without issue, but once i mux, or rip or burn, it slows to a halt.

 

[rotjong]

You have 4 GB of RAM installed and Vista 32-bit does and can recognize 4 GB of memory but it cannot actually utilize it all. As with XP 32-bit there is the 4 GB limitation. It really comes down to the limitations of a 32-bit operating system. With Vista 64-bit you would be seeing and utilizing the full amount installed.

Even though you aren't able to make full use of the 4 GB of system memory it is still better than if you only had 2 GB installed.

 

[Not Bman]

So what about my question

I can multitask games and programs without any slow down.

Ripping, muxing, and burning it's slowed to a halt.

(off topic question, is there away to upgrade to 64bit without reinstalling anything?)

 

[LeeJend]

On board video shared ram may reduce your total. Task Manager is only seeing 2.8G

A 32 bit OS will only recognize 3MB of the 4MB installed.

You can't put the whole item you are converting in RAM so you have to spool to disk as you process. That can severly slow things down. Check disk usage stats while you are slowed down.

In general turn off all non-essential tasks when doing processor or memory intesive jobs. Make sure the HD is defrag'd. If not you slow HD just gets really slow jumping around all over itself looking for free space. Also the HD should be packed as all one contiguous free area. Page files can really screw this up.

Kill pagefiles, hibernate files, etc then defrag. Right after defrag turn pagefiles, etc back on. Now your work area will be contiguous.

 

[rotjong]

(off topic question, is there away to upgrade to 64bit without reinstalling anything?)

Unless something changed when I wasn't aware then the answer is no. There is no upgrade path from 32-bit to 64-bit.

 

[Not Bman]

On board video shared ram may reduce your total. Task Manager is only seeing 2.8G

A 32 bit OS will only recognize 3MB of the 4MB installed.

You can't put the whole item you are converting in RAM so you have to spool to disk as you process. That can severly slow things down. Check disk usage stats while you are slowed down.

In general turn off all non-essential tasks when doing processor or memory intesive jobs. Make sure the HD is defrag'd. If not you slow HD just gets really slow jumping around all over itself looking for free space. Also the HD should be packed as all one contiguous free area. Page files can really screw this up.

Kill pagefiles, hibernate files, etc then defrag. Right after defrag turn pagefiles, etc back on. Now your work area will be contiguous.

Thanks I will give that a try. Not exactly remembering how to turn off Pagefiles though, but should be able to figure it out. And I guess defrag really makes the difference I never thought it did.

 

[LordOfLA]

Make sure your drives are running in DMA mode. The greatest cause of slow down during IO is running in PIO mode.

 

[Not Bman]

How would I change that?

 

[Sazar]

Control Panel > System > Drive properties usually.

 

[Not Bman]

I don't seem to find anything about DMA in the control panel, system just shows information, nothing to change.

 

[LordOfLA]

it would be in device manager on the SATA/IDE controllers.

 

[Dark Atheist]

i always thought sata drives would default to udmaX (x being 6/7)

 

[LordOfLA]

if there are too many crc errors they switch to PIO.

 

[Not Bman]

Seems like everything is in DMA. I haven't defraged either yet.

Quick suggestion to your favorite defrag program?

 

[rotjong]

One thing to note is that if you use AnyDVD it prevents your ODDs from reverting to PIO.

I recommend Raxco PerfectDisk for defragmentation.

 

[Not Bman]

One thing to note is that if you use AnyDVD it prevents your ODDs from reverting to PIO.

I recommend Raxco PerfectDisk for defragmentation.

Good to know, and thanks for suggestion.

And I don't need to disable pagefiles and such to defrag right?